"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 1 - The Demons at Rainbow Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)
She shrugged, her mind indicating she thought he was putting her on, but she had nothing better to do. < If you say so. Jimmy. I try.>
Instant shock; more puzzlement, total contusion. < There is people on there! How that be, Jimmy? Why they not burn up?>
"We don't know," he answered honestly. "That's why we're here. Let me get you in closer. You might even be able to tell different people when I'm done. Nobody in particular, but somebody. Let's see."
< Funny, crazy feelings, > she reported, more fascinated than scared, her contusion now completely dismissed because fact had replaced doubt in her mind.
"No, they're not. That's why it's so hard to talk to them. Take a look at any of them you can feel. See if you can make any sense out of what they're feeling."
She tried; she really tried.
He sighed and switched off the mike. "No good. She's there and in, but they're as alien to her as to us. Aside from adding a touch of childlike wonder, it's the same dead end."
"Well, it was worth a try." Tris Lankur sighed.
Jimmy's head snapped up and he almost forgot to trigger the mike back on. "What? What did you ask?"
< Whole bunch be sad is all. Other ones come, try to make feel better. They not do good job of it, though. Maybe I help. Send nice love. Oh, my! I guess I screw up!>
Jimmy was suddenly so excited he nearly forgot himself. "No! No! You're doing fine!" To the others, he said, "She found some of them feeling sad, maybe grief. Hard to say. I can't pick it up myself, even via her mind, just her responses and reactions. She did her instinctive thing of shooting down some sympathy vibes -- and they got it!"
"No, no, you're doing just fine!" he assured her.
< Whole big crowd come. More 'n more. They look all over. Most send up. I not know what they send. What I do, Jimmy ?>
"Send more good feelings to them. As widely as possible. As strong and as much as you can."
The Durquist suddenly stirred. "I greatly fear we have just started a new religion with ourselves as the gods. Imagine what would happen if you were at a memorial service for some deceased kin and suddenly everybody got a hundred times amplified blast of love and kisses from beyond."
"I'll take it!" Lankur responded. "We don't have to start discussing philosophy and politics with them. Our job was to establish a means of contact, and that we did. Broadcast empathy! So obvious everybody missed it completely! And so would we -- if we hadn't happened to have poor, sweet, childlike Molly along. McCray -- take the backup chair. Get in on the same beam with her. I realize I'm asking you to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, but what if we could get some kind of thought picture from On High while they're still looking? Don't link minds. Just send a simple thought, a simple greeting, a feeling of hello, as she continues to send empathically. Short burst. Don't try for a response -- we know what happens when we try that. Let Molly feel the response!"
Jimmy was in the other chair as quickly as he could get there, and just before the blister activated he told Molly, "I'm not going to talk for a few minutes. You just keep sending to them. I'm going to try and send a hello to the same folks while we have their attention."
< Okay, Jimmy. I guess that would be nice. 1 not like what they send back now. Kind'a like they be people I own or some-thin '.>
"Just relax. Activating."
He was in quickly, but had to depend on Grysta's control of his biochemistry to calm down enough to do it. This would be tricky. A simple image, a simple greeting. Open hands? Godlike father figure? No, that wouldn't do. They didn't have bodies like he did, let alone hands. Some kind of burst, maybe just pulses. Yes, that was it. Ah -- he had them. He couldn't follow anything telepathically, but he could tell they were pretty damned worked up about something. Here goes . . .
<. . . pulse . . . pulse . . . pulsepulse. Pulsepulse . . . pulse-pulse . . . pulsepulsepulsepulse. > Repeat Pattern. Twice . . . three times.
Blister off, power off.
< Dumb stuff. They keep winkin' on and off to me! Don't make no sense. >
"Hot damn! We did it!" McCray shouted to them, clapping
his hands in a kind of nervous self-applause. "Code -- simple arithmetic. But they got it! They got it!"
"Grid coordinates are registered," the Durquist reported. "I suspect that will be a holy and well-visited spot from this point on. We can cut her loose."
"I almost hate to," Jimmy responded. "It's sort of like getting a call from God and suddenly being put on hold."
"Better than killing them," Tris Lankur responded. "They can wait. We've done what we were commissioned to do. Our job now is to get the hell out of here in one piece and report to our employers on the means and methods. It'll be up to others, scientists, permanent development teams -- you name it -- to turn this into a conversation, which it might well take years to do."
Molly's blister winked out and the chair powered down. She didn't get up, but looked over at them. "Thanks. I -- it not feel right what they feel to me."
Jimmy McCray went over and kissed her, an act that both surprised and pleased the Syn. "Oh, Molly, you came through for us! We all love you, Molly!"
She smiled and seemed genuinely pleased. "I did good?"
"You did wonderful!."
Grysta was practical, as ever. < You tell them she gets a full team share for this. Jimmy. >
"Aye, and a team rating too!" he responded, laughing. "Sweet Jesus it's been a long time since something worked out!"
INTERLUDE:
COLLECT CALL
FROM HELL
The Durquist found her in her cabin, just lying there, staring up at the ceiling. She glanced over at the creature when it filled her open hatch door, but said nothing.
"You do not look particularly happy at this juncture," the Durquist noted. "Everyone else is celebrating the end of the jinx. Is it because the childish little Syn did what you couldn't?"
Modra Stryke sighed and shook her head. "No, it's nothing like that. I am happy we managed it, partly because everybody needed it so badly and partly because -- well, it's good to leave on something positive. It was a fluke, though. I really wish we'd done it through something we planned and not something we lucked into."
"You display ignorance of achievement," the Durquist responded. "Almost everyone who ever accomplished something very difficult and very major did so at least in part due to flukes and luck. Those alone get you what you wish in only a very few cases, but all the hard work and suffering and strain in the universe isn't enough to hit it big without those breaks. It is part of the way things are. We took the risk and this time the break came our way. It's about time, really, although, many people never get the break. We lose a telepath and have to take what we can get, then wind up with one who's got a Syn who's little more than a programmed organic robot with the built-in power to make rakish men spend money to copulate with her, and that little talent turns out to be the key to breaking something that all us smart folks and even smarter machines couldn't break. And in our first real triumph, for which we'll take full credit even if it was a fluke, you decide to quit on us."
"I have to," she responded hollowly. "I shouldn't have come on this one. I should have gone in for full therapy and put it all behind me instead of going through this -- torture. I guess it all boils down to the fact that I may be as dumb as I thought, but I'm definitely not as tough as I always thought I was."
"Oh, you're tough, all right," the Durquist responded. "Anyone else would have quit this business long ago. And anyone else with the load you put on yourself would have blown themselves away or put in for cymol or something equally drastic. You're just blaming yourself for not being a machine, Modra. But you're not a machine, and even machines make mistakes, sometimes big ones. Look at poor McCray before you sink forever."
She sighed. "I know, I know. I guess I'm probably better off than he is, for all that. I mink I would die rather than allow myself to become almost property, and that thing on his back just about owns him body and soul. It must be a miserable experience, particularly with that sex bomb around. But it's no good to point out how miserable other people are. I know most people live in more misery and squalor and hopelessness than I'll ever understand. It doesn't help, though. At least his wasn't self-inflicted; it was an on-the-job injury, really. And what happened, happened only to him. He didn't screw anybody else. That's what the real problem is, you see. I don't have any computerized brain and simulated personality. I don't have any creature on my back telling me what I can and can't do. I'm fine, even well-fixed. I'm not like McCray -- I'm more like, well, that parasite of his."
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